“The fact of such consultations is positive as a whole because it was difficult to organize such meetings for a long time. This was conditioned by the fact that the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics refused to take part in them,” Klimkin said on Tuesday.

The participants in the consultations “discussed the release of hostages and the prerequisites for stopping arms use”, he said.

Klimkin said Ukraine and the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) “are ready to continue consultations and work substantively”. “Representatives of the Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics are also ready to work in this direction,” he added.

On September 1, the Contact Group’s meeting in Minsk lasted almost four hours. Attending were former Ukrainian President Kuchma, Russian Ambassador to Ukraine Mikhail Zurabov, the OSCE chairperson-on-office’s special representative for Ukraine Heidi Tagliavini. Also participating in the talks were a senior member of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) government Andrei Purgin and the self-proclaimed Lugansk People’s Republic parliament speaker Alexei Karyakin.